


Children of War

by anesor



Series: Star Wars Snippets [12]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Child Death, Childhood Trauma, Gen, PTSD, child endangerment, clone wars au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-18
Updated: 2019-11-18
Packaged: 2021-02-08 12:56:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21476368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anesor/pseuds/anesor
Summary: Anakin and Obi-Wan are troubled by nightmares as one mission slogs on, but a few things are learned.
Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker
Series: Star Wars Snippets [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/930086
Comments: 6
Kudos: 110
Collections: Shadows of the Saber (NaNo 2019 Star Wars short fiction collection)





	Children of War

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SWModdy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SWModdy/gifts).

Taking Hoy’et Fer from CIS had been a long slog, weeks seemed like months.

Months felt like years..

I knew this kriffing war had lasted only a few years. It didn’t seem that long to be married to my Angel, but time with her was islands of happiness in the Sith-hell of all this fighting. Teaching Ahsoka helped too, but I worried she wasn’t really ready. She’d been sent to Christophsis at the same age I was only sent on boring diplomatic missions.

I thought the Council crazy to send her out alone.

She was great, but it should not have happened.

Everything worked out with us in the end, and we had a lot of fun when it wasn’t the boring stuff.

That made Hoy’et Fer even worse because my Padawan was on weeks of required modules. That left me with only Obi-Wan for company. Vod were great, but even Rex didn’t get life outside war and that’s what I needed the most in those rare moments we weren’t fighting.

Worst was the local inhabitants being wiped out by the sloppy fighting by battle droids. This was a Seppie world, _how could they wipe out their own people?_

We tried very hard to avoid harming civilian populations, escorting them away from combat zones and avoiding pockets of civvies. Droids were easy enough to separate from people before you blew them to itty-bitty pieces.

Not many people often took arms with Dooku’s droid forces, thank the Force. I wondered sometimes if they really wanted this war anymore than we did.

But there were people fighting with the droids for whatever crazy reason Dooku convinced them of this time and they were harder to kill, even in battle. Smoke and burned flesh and fabric was giving me nightmares of sand again.

Nightmares I could _not_ admit to my old Master.

He would have me up on charges before the Council, publicly denounce me on the block to the jeering crowd of Senators, shackled again as even Padmé turned away.

This was a worse nightmare and I woke up, panting in our tent.

A hand gripped my shoulder. “Easy, Anakin.”

Voice and presence were so calming, my breathing instantly slowed and racing thoughts settled some. So little a thing and I grabbed on to it like a some lost slave being smothered by the sand.

When I thought my voice was clearer again, I still rattled. “Oh, kriff. I… It was… they looked at… No one would. Their eyes, even… Everything felt dead aroun...”

“Padawan, breathe. Breathe with me on my count.” He gripped both shoulders now, leaning over me like a rock as I comvulsively clutched at him. “These are _ phantasms _ right now, true or not. Be in the here and now, resting off-shift with our men around us. Breathe deep and _ feel them _ around us. You’re safe here.”

The burr of the mostly sleeping Vode around us was calming, reminding me how good true sleep felt after hard battles.

Nearly calm, I looked at Obi-Wan in the dim light of our electronics. “Sorry, I woke you with my nightmare, Master.”

I couldn’t see his smile silhouetted in the dim, but I could feel his tired smile as much as hear the words. “Wasn’t asleep myself. We still have a few hours left before dawn to sleep.”

My voice was wobbly. “Master...” _ Please, _ I begged silently, trying to chase away the nightmares.

His reply only seemed to take forever. Obi-Wan sighed. “Move over those gangly, over-tall limbs...”

Relieved, buoyant, content, happy, safe with someone important to me, all mixed together as we balanced together on the narrow standard cot.

I did not care.

Not at all, a warm body to hold always chased away my nightmares, and I sank quickly into sleep, feeling Obi-Wan drift away as well.

Nothing was different the next day. We had to take a town that was large enough to conceal weapons or troops, but really did not have any defenses. There were many non-combatants, so bombing them from orbit was not even on the list. We would have to take it street by street from the CIS forces, droid and sentient.

As well trained as our men were, as much Obi-Wan and I used the Force to protect our troops, too many died as we found pockets of violent enemy among scared civilians. We had steady streams of Vode escorting or carrying them away.

Taking another breather, I really looked at my old Master in the overcast light. He did not look like his usual neat and charming self, but too much like a corpse. Eyes sunken and dull from tiredness. Flesh too loose on the bone and robes in extreme disarray for him, even if few would know. Even his hair was dusty and matted, more like a wig or helmet than the shining red-gold it should be. Only his beard looked almost normal, as what I was seeing flickered away to a weathered and dying body failing in a duel.

My heart constricted.

He was as important as Padmé to me. “Master!”

Eyes sparked again, focusing on me with an encouraging smile. “Two or three more skirmishes and we’ll set our advance for the day. I don’t believe they will surrender, but they _ will _ fall back soon.”

I wasn’t going to argue that but I was getting a bad feeling about this. I could see that strain that said he was more unsettled than he’d ever admit. I only nodded.

Our next contact was especially bloody, and even we Jedi had gotten winged before enemy troops led us into a mined area. Once it started, I used to Force to smother the ground and hold it from further explosions.

I held it solid as Obi-Wan swept the Vode in the front with us back with tiny sweeps of his fingers. The pressure built in my head as I had to hold the skin of the soil solid under our feet. Detonation after detonation could pulse downward only, triggering all the other mines at once.

My eyes were closed and head pounding before I felt arms pulling me away and the ground I stumbled across was unstable.

My head felt like it would explode when I was thrown to the ground and the world was silent.

This was only a matter of seconds from warning to flat on the ground

Blinking my eyes open, I saw Rex had pulled me out and a sagging Obi-Wan was muttering something at Cody. There were Vod down, but not as many as I’d feared.

When I looked back where we’d just been standing, the ground looked both like a construction pit and bomb crater. Soil, metals, water and sewage pipes, hard wired cables, and debris of the mines themselves, all jumbled together. My head and shoulder ached.

I felt Rex shouting at me long before I heard anything. He pointed at his ear and at me, and I nodded, I knew at least Kix would yell at me for not having protection.

Obi-Wan wouldn’t for probably the same reasons, but yelled at was fine.

I was hearing again after a break, even if everything sounded tinny.

We moved forward a little slower, seeking the feel of mines again. We were past the crater some distance and threaded between intact buildings before we saw a damaged and smoking building showing massive blaster damage.

_ ** We hadn’t gotten this far. ** _ I kept looking for a reason, my heart sinking with every step until I realized it was the ruins of a school.

Different enough from learning with my mother or Obi-Wan, I did not recognize the arrangement of seating and teaching boards at first. What made it clear were the torn up little bodies, taller ones with their arms around the smaller. There were few adults and a couple had prosthetics from the war.

There were too many children.

I heard a strangled hiccup of a sound from Obi-Wan, but when I looked his face looked calm.

This many children… _ we _ did not do it, even if no one wanted to believe that. “Rex, see if we can persuade any of the people we escorted out to come back and help. Their families deserve to know what happened instead of just wondering...”

“If we did not do this, had not come this far, this was...” _ Obi-Wan _ sputtered for a word. “Sith-level darkness to involve them in battle . That they didn’t even care about their own future. Blasters tore through these younglings and the building sheltering them. It doesn’t really matter if they were human or battle-droid now, they are _ still _ dead!” Strain and fervor edged a normally pleasant voice.

I started to feel alarmed at the rage coming from my old Master. This wasn’t just anger, it was a wrath that reminded me too much of the Seppie leader on Geonosis. “Master,” I brushed against his arm, afraid _ ** for ** _ him, of _ losing him _ to this anger. “Master, their families deserve to know, to be respected.”

Obi-Wan paused and deflated, his anger draining away. “Yes, of course. I’m so tir… Make a record for passing to local authorities when things quiet down.”

“I already set Rex to find someone to come back.”

“Good, good.” His voice was flat and he moved off, seeking for life in any of the bodies. He stopped the longest at the body of a brown haired girl about Ahsoka’s age whose face was almost intact, brown eyes staring. His Force-presence twisted into a hard knot, as dense as japor.

“General! Kix!” Cody shouted, a distance away.

I started moving before Obi-Wan stirred and reached a section of wall that had fallen to almost make a bunker. It was covered with rubble, but even now I could hear noises. The Force told there were several alive in there and in pain, but alive.

I know I felt better to shift into rescue operations. We set up camp around and protecting these ruins and these survivors. There were more than I’d originally thought, over a dozen really small younglings and one teacher’s aid, surprised we were here and helping them.

But that group was too small for the number of younglings who had been in the school.

Sleep wasn’t going to come and I spent time trying to repair a few teaching droids to give the children who’d been moved back to a medical tent.

I thought Obi-Wan had meditated and gone to sleep.

But now he was shaking, mumbling or hissing something in his dream, and fear shifted to bone-wrenching grief as he mourned. The aching of isolation and loneliness in that pain felt too familiar... I didn’t think he could ever _ grieve _ as deeply as when Master Qui-Gon died.

But this was _ raw. _

His pain was pulling me in too.

Crawling over, I climbed into his bunk, wrapping myself around him.

Dropping my shields I pulled him close remembering the school today and the damned arses who simply destroyed them for jollies or terror. Even if it was the droids who did it, they were set loose by generals and whoever kriffed up the droids targeting code.

And _they_ claimed the Vode weren’t _human._

Then I realized the bodies I was remembering were not here in this small city on Hoy’et. I didn’t know these young children, these bodies.

I knew their names at the end.

I felt defeat even if I was not the only one standing. I glared at the traitor, just as young as the soldiers who dragged him to were I grieved Cerasi.

I suddenly realized the young were nearly the same age as Cody and the nightmare ended abruptly.

When my eyes opened, Obi-Wan’s were watering inches away from mine.

He rasped, “You saw?”

I ducked my head. “Didn’t mean to. You were so upset and I just wanted to help. Who were they?” I wanted to ask about the girl, but even I knew that was too touchy.

I could feel him reassembling himself, like some jigsaw puzzle or broken droid, until he was the calm Jedi Master and General again instead of weeping youngling.

My heart suddenly ached, wondering who and how harsh those lessons were.

He took another deep breath. “That was the endgame of a civil war at Melida/Daan. The war had gone on so long, centuries, the younger generation didn’t understand why and wanted peace, both sides. They made for a third side and I… volunteered to help them end the long war and make peace. They were so young, fighting just to make it stop. The older generations were so lost in their hatred they could not consider any kind of peace but utter destruction of the others. The Young deserved a chance to live their own lives, even have a chance at childhood. They were all so young, some younger than you were when I met you. They just wanted peace and not be killed in their parents’ war. They wanted it so badly...”

“Where was Master Qui-Gon? I didn’t see him.”

“He left me there." Guilt rang from the Master and his face twitched. “He declared the peace mission a failure and was going to leave the Young to die in the middle. Master Tahl was injured badly and he would never admit he canned the mission because he was attached.”

Obi-Wan stared him in the eye. “I still don’t know how he could square leaving children in peril like that with the Code.”

I stared at him, trying to fit these pieces together. “So he left you in the middle of a civil war. But you were his _Padawan.”_

“Not anymore. He said if I wanted to stay, I would not be a Jedi… I could not accept leaving them to die in somebody else’s war. That always tears me up.” Obi-Wan waved toward the city around them.

“How old were you, Obi-Wan?” I was almost afraid to know.

“Thirteen, maybe barely fourteen. After Cerasi died in the last convulsion, I returned to the Temple. I still don’t know who persuaded Qui-Gon to accept me back, but Master Yoda or Master Koon are most likely. It was hard… after that war, coming back to being just a Padawan and having to prove myself to Qui-Gon and the Council. I worked for a long time to be _ ** perfect, ** _ for us to get a working relationship, but I now dou..."

I sagged and buried myself against my former Master. “I thought you didn’t like younglings much, the way you acted when I left Mom. But you are _ so good _ with Ahsoka.”

“It was never you, Ani. Children, hurt children from battle, any that echo Cerasi, or children who must fight to survive… ‘Gets attached too easily’ went my evaluations. I was quite attached to you before we burned Master Qui-Gon’s body. But I know far too well how much attachments cost, and I would prefer you have a less painful time of it.” Obi-Wan’s smile was small, but pride shined through.

I grabbed Obi-Wan in a tight hug. “I can handle your pains better than that karking detachment.”

Obi-Wan relaxed and gripped me just as tightly.

We could talk more later.

**Author's Note:**

> Story Inspired by an idea in Moddy's recent prompt run:  
<https://swpromptsandasks.tumblr.com/post/189108989296/the-prompt-run>
> 
> Said prompt:  
_What if the reason why Obi-Wan is initially so uncomfortable and standoffish with Anakin is because of PTSD from Melida/Daan? He probably never got therapy for it because of the stigma of “leaving” the order. What if being around children just reminds him of all the kids he saw getting killed? _  
\---  
The Vode, Obi-Wan, and even Ahsoka were all children of war. For all Anakin's trials, he was never really shoved into the middle of war and force to mature without adult support at some too young point. I wrote this In just over a day as part of my NaNo2019 SW short stories collection. Feel free to review and tell me details about what does and does not work, listening is the way to get better. Or just let me know that it works.
> 
> These characters and universe are owned by George Lucas and Disney. No infringement is intended or profit made with this story.


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